19-26 March 2018 Dragon of the Week review: Hippie Dragon

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! Welcome to the review of this week's Dragon of the Week: Hippie Dragon. This article will provide you with information about breeding, potential usage of Hippie in battles, breeding and leveling up temples, gold generating and finally, will help you decide if you should try to get it for your own. So, let's start!

Breeding

Baby Hippie Dragon

To get your Hippie Dragon, you have to breed Lava Dragon with Candy Dragon. This is rather easy combination, one common and one uncommon dragon, with first four elements that you unlock, so you can possibly have both needed dragons at player level 11. This means that you have a chance of obtaining your Hippie Dragon even if you started playing DML just a  few days ago! Breeding takes 20 h (16 h if you are 2+ level VIP) and hatching takes 1 d 2 h (20 h 48 min if you are 2+ level VIP). This is quite long, and this article will help you determine if this dragon is worth those times. 

Other possible outcomes when breeding Lava Dragon with Candy Dragon are listed below:

 Boiling Dragon: 4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min) breeding and 6h 30 min (5 h 12 min) hatching
 Snow Dragon: 4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min) breeding and 6h 30 min (5 h 12 min) hatching
 Tree Dragon: 6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min) breeding and 8h 30 min (6 h 48 min) hatching
 Mud Dragon: 6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min) breeding and 9h 40 min (7 h 44 min) hatching
 Sunflower Dragon: 12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min) breeding and 16 h 50 min (13 h 28 min) hatching
 Elemental Dragon: 12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min) breeding and 19 h 20 min (15 h 28 min) hatching
 Orange Dragon: 16 h 00 min (12 h 48 min) breeding and 23 h 30 min (18 h 48 min) hatching)
 Agave Dragon: 16 h 00 min (12 h 48 min) breeding and 23 h 30 min (18 h 48 min) hatching)

Hippie's egg

We have there four standard bi-elemental hybrids, then Sunflower, which is rare bi-elemental, one rare tri-elemental and two epic tri-elementals. As Hippie himself is rare, he is more likely outcome than Agave and Orange. The combination of Lava and Candy is therefore really nice: gives you a chance of getting Sunflower, which is usually first bigger breeding challenge for new players, and 3 nice other tri-elementals, with most likely outcomes (Boiling, Snow, Tree and Mud) having acceptable times. On the other hand, if you are advanced player, you most likely have all those dragons and Hippie is any new dragon you can get from this combination.

Hippie in battle

Adult Hippie

Having  wind as base element isn't the best option for a battle dragon: Hippie will suffer 150%  damage from  fire and light attacks, which both have very offensive sills. There is also a bright side: if any dragon will try to reducee Hippie's attack damage by wind skill, its attack will do only 50% damage. Anyhow, this doesn't compensate element weakness to fire and light.

On the other hand, total set of Hippie's element is really nice: . Wind attacks are strong (deal 150% damage) to earth dragons and can reduce target's attack damage with skill. light attacks are strong to earth, wind and energy dragons and can damage all the enemy dragons. Plant attacks are strong to void dragons and can poison enemy. So there are 4 different elements that Hippie can do 150% damage to, and 3 different offensive skills that he has. You could have already noticed that Jungle Dragon with  elements can do strong attacks to exactly the same set of dragons as Hippie, while being only common and normally breedable. This may seem like if Jungle was better battle choice than Hippie,  being easier to obtain and requiring less enchantment materials, but you should keep in mind that plant attack is weak to light element (as well as light attacks), so no matter what you do, Jungle Dragon will only do 50% damage to dragons with light as primary element. Hippie doesn't have this problem, as it can attack those dragons with his wind attack for normal 100% damage. Possibility of reducing enemies' attack damage is also something nice, that Jungle Dragon does not have. 

Another great thing about Hippie is that all his elements are connected to different rarity of enchanted league potions:  is common and will give you 2x damage,  is uncommon and will give you 3x damage, and  is rare and will give you 6x damage. This means you have a lot of possibilities and depending on the enemy you can either utilize common or uncommon potion (which one usually has a lot of), or do really big damage with rare potion when enemy dragon is hard one. With 4 different elements that Hippie can do 150% damage to, he is really great pick for enchantment league.

Adult Holly Dragon

All the positive aspects of Hippie's elements set are shared with the Holly Dragon, which is . Holly however has plant as its base element, so will not suffer strong attack from light and fire elements, but from metal and dark elements. This is a little bit better, as metal has defensive, but damaging skill. Holly will also get weak attacks from plant and water - this is much nicer than weak attack from wind, as plant has very offensive poison skill, and there exists two, not one element that would do weak attacks to Holly. With all this facts, Holly seems slightly better battle dragon than Hippie, but Holly Dragon is epic, while Hippie is only rare. This means that enchanting Hippie will be pretty much easier than enchanting Holly, so in my opinion, Hippie is better choice for low-level players.

You have to keep in mind that you need Light Temple (unlocks at player level 36) to level your Holly Dragon above level 10, so you will not get his full battle potential that comes with light element before you unlock light element on regular basics. However, if your player level is lower than 36, and your battle dragons' levels aren't much higher than 10, Holly can be nice assisting battle dragons (used for example in easier dungeon battles), that can be then easily adapted to your main team after building Light Temple. 

Hippie as parent and temple leveling dragon

With 3 different elements, Hippie isn't best dragon to use for regular breeding, as predicting the outcome would be very hard. 3 elements dragons are usually used in great combinations for Dragon of the Month, but since the release of the game, light has never been an element required for Dragon of the Month. Therefore, Hippie will not be good dragon to use as parent in any situation.

Light Temple

On the other hand, Hippie's set of elements is great when you plan upgrading your temples. To level up a temple, you need a certain number of dragons with the same element as the temple you want to upgrade fed to a certain level, depending on temple level. Of course, when you need to feed some dragons just to upgrade your temples, tri-element dragons are best choices, as they will count for 3 different temples, so you can feed smaller total number of dragons to upgrade all temples that you need. However, there are only 2 normally bredable tri-element dragons with light element (Stardust and Bronze). Few other are aviable via enchanted breeding (Frosty, Fossil) or card packs (Palladin), but obtaining those is harder than obtaining dragon of the week. With this fact, Hippie can greatly fill nice niche role as dragon fed to level up a temple even if you don't plan using him directly in fights and having him can possibly save you some food while upgrading your temples.

Gold generating

Hippie can live in a light habitat, which are great for storing gold (as only dark habitats have higher gold capacity), in a plant habitat, which is the good option for low level players, or in a wind habitat - I don't recommend putting your Hippie in a wind habitat, as it has rather low gold capacity and if you have Hippie, it means you have already unlocked plant habitats. Base gold per hour for Hippie is 510, which means that he will produce 1770 gold/hour at level 10. As there are many dragons with light element with better gold/hour, up to 700-800, Hippie isn't one of best gold generators in game, but  is still a pretty good one. High level players can choose from many better options, but if you are still low- or medium-level player, most of your dragons probably have between 200 and 400 base gold/hour, so Hippie will be great for you!

Conclusion

Hippie is great dragon for low-level players in almost all matters: its one of the best gold generators available to people with player level around 10-30, can be easily turned into main battle dragon just when you reach player level 36, and other dragons that you can get while trying to get him can be also great help for new player. So if you just started your adventure in Dragonlandia, you definitely should try to obtain Hippie.

More advanced players have some better options for both gold generating and fighting, but even if you do, think of trying to breed Hippie if you don't have Holly, because Holly is the only dragon with the same set of elements that Hippie has, and is also event-only dragon. While Holly is Christmas-themed dragons, it will most likely not be available to obtain before next winter, and no one knows when will be Hippie available again. Hippie can help you upgrade your temples more effectively, and even not being top tier gold generator, can still produce nice amount of gold, so think twice before you decide not to try breeding him. 

If you already upgraded your light temple to maximum level or have many other tri-element dragons with light element, have legendary or divine battle dragons and better gold generators, you don't really need Hippie dragon for his element set and the decision if you should get it or not is up to you - if you like its design, try getting it anyway :)

Please let me know in comments what do you think of Hippie Dragon and if you had a luck breeding him. Have a wonderful day in your Dragonlandia!

Update: My Hippie

As you can see below, I have already put Hippie's egg in my Hatchery on my main iOS account. I've bred it at 5th try with both parents at level 30, getting one Orange meanwhile, which helped me in Crowded Nursery :) I hope for you to have such a luck too!